S3Q6 
<f8t  a. 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 


C  Buttre  BewTork 


ADDRESS 


SUCCESS  IN  BUSINESS, 


DELIVERED  BEFORE  THE  STUDENTS  OF 


PACKARD'S  BRYANT  &  STRATTOH 


/ 

f 


HON.  HORACE   GREELEY, 

a  <  6- 

i  >:  c 

AT   THE 

' 


^  «  LARGE    jFlALL  OF  THE    COOPER  UNION, 

fc  * 

2J 

^  IsTO'V.    11,    1867. 


S.    S.    PACKARD,    PUBLISHER, 
937    BROADWAY, 

tleiu  l)orh. 


Entered  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1867,  by 

S.  S.  PACKARD, 

In  the  Clerk's  Office  of  the  District  Court  of  the  United  States,  for  the 
Southern  District  of  New.  York. 


KUSSKL.L/S  American  Steam  Printing  House, 
if<,  SO  and  32  Centre  Street,  New  York. 


CORRESPONDENCE. 


(Packard's  Bryant  &*  Stratton  ^Business  College, 
037  Broadway,  N.  Y.,  Nov.  20,  1837. 


Son. 

(Dear  Sir  : 

.     When  you  first  consented  to  speak  to  our 

young  men  on  ((  Success  in  (Business"  I  did  not  fully 

comprehend  the  interest  which  would  attach  to  the  sub" 

^   ject  and  the  speaker,  and  presumed  that  our  College 

%    Lecture   feooms,  capable  of  holding,  comfortably,  one 

>-    thousand  persons,  would  accommodate  your  hearers. 

I  discovered  my  error  an  hour  before  the  time  set  for 
3    your  address,  when  our  rooms  were  crowded  almost  to 
suffocation,  and  people  not  able  to  gain  admission  were 
^   going  away  in  great  numbers. 

At  the  request  of  our  students,  who  had  given  their 

-  places  to  friends  and  strangers,  you  consented  to  repeat 

the  address  at  the  large  hall  of  the  Cooper  Union,  which 

p    will  seat  comfortably  twenty=five  hundred  persons.     I 

x    was  almost  as  much  deceived  as  before.     Half  an  hour 

8    before  the  time,  every  seat  was  taken,  and  finally,  every 

u    inch  of  standing  space,  while  hundreds  went  away  who 

H    could  not  be  accommodated. 

Since  that  time,  I  have  been  continually  solicited  to 
have  the  address  published,  that  all  who  wish  may 
obtain  it.  Without  asking  your  consent,  I  had  employed 
a  verbatim  reporter,  who  committed  to  paper  what  fell 
from  your  lips  •  thinking,  at  least,  to  possess  the  address 

461447 


4  CORRESPONDENCE. 

for  my  own  perusal.  This  is  as  far  as  I  have  dared  to 
proceed,  upon  my  own  responsibility  •  but,  judging  from 
the  liberality  you  have  already  shown,  I  have  encour~ 
aged  my  friends  to  hope  that  you  would  permit  me  to 
put  the  address  in  an  enduring  form,  that  it  may  be 
accessible  to  the  large  army  of  young  men  throughout 
the  country  who  desire  nothing  so  much  as  that  some 
onef  wise  enough,  shall  point  out  to  them  a  sure  path  to 
tl Success  in  (Business" 

In  preferring  this  request,  I  desire,  most  heartily,  to 
thank  you,  on  behalf  of  the  earnest  men  of  our  specialty 
who  so  thoroughly  appreciate  your  character,  and  who 
honor  you  from  their  hearts  for  the  noble  recognition 
you  have  given  to  our  labors. 

If  the  representative  men  of  the  country  would,  like 
yourself,  occasionally  turn  aside  from  the  grand 
schemes  of  speculative  philosophy,  and  put  themselves 
in  more  immediate  contact  with  the  busy  world,  the 
more  humble  but  not  less  earnest  workers  in  the  field  of 
human  benefaction  would  be  encouraged  and  inspired 
to  lines  of  duty  and  achievements  worthy  of  the  highest 
recognition  •  and  many  an  honest  effort,  which  now, 
from  lack  of  such  encouragement,  degenerates  into  weak 
subterfuges  for  public  favor,  would  be  felt  in  the  great 
volume  of  human  progress,  which,  in  spite  of  narrow- 
mindedness  and  corruption,  in  spite  of  calumny,  detrac= 
tion,  and  all  manner  of  evil,  will,  in  God's  good  time, 
lead  to  the  highest  development  and  the  greatest  happi* 
ness  of  our  race. 

With  sincere  regard, 

I  am  triily  yours, 

&  S.  PACKARD. 


REPLY. 


Office  of  "  The  Tribune;' 

New  York,  Nov.  SS,  186*7. 


My  (Dear  Sir: 


I  very  gladly  complied  with  your  first,  and 
also  with  your  second  invitation  to  speak  to  your  stu=> 
dents  and  their  friends,  because  I  felt  that  there  was 
something  useful  to  be  said,  and  I  hoped  that  forty  years 
of  rugged  experience,  most  of  it  in  this  city,  had  quali= 
fied  me  to  try  and  say  it.  There  are  one  million  young 
men  in  our  country  who  need  to  know  what  I  tried  to 
say. 

If,  then,  you  can  do  more  good  by  printing  it,  I  pray 
you  to  do  it,  in  your  own  way. 

Yours, 

HORACE  QREELEY 
i 

8.  S.  (P^CKjlFiQ,  Esq.. 


^^i'r 


<* 


/i""v/<i 


C* 


ADDEESS. 


LADIES  AND  GENTLEMEN  :  When  our  friend  first  in- 
vited me  to  speak  to  his  scholars,  I  very  cheerfully  ac- 
cepted the  invitation,  because  it  seemed  to  me  that 
there  were  some  popular  misapprehensions  likely  to 
arise,  if  they  had  not  already  arisen,  with  regard  to  the 
utility  of  Business  Colleges  ;  or  rather  to  the  direction 
from  which  that  utility  might  be  anticipated.  I  had 
heard  so  many  young  men  speak  as  though  they  might 
go  to  a  Business  College  and  acquire  there  what  Was  to 
be  learned,  and  thereupon  be  sure  of  employment— of 
being  hired  as  clerks,  or  book-keepers,  or  in  some  such 
capacity— that  I  felt  sad  under  a  conviction  that  this 
kind  of  anticipation  could  not,  in  the  nature  of  things, 
be  always  realized.  However,  of  that  I  will  speak 
further  on.  I  propose,  then,  being  thus  invited,  to 
speak  mainly  to  such  young  men  as  may  choose  to 
hear  me,  of  Business,  and  of  Success  in  Business;  giving 
them  such  homely  hints  with  reference  to  the  subject, 
as  my  experience,  not  now  brief,  and  my  varied 
fortunes,  may  enable  me  to  afford.  In  these  hints,  I 
shall  not  follow  precisely  the  order,  or  use,  of  course, 
precisely  the  illustrations,  that  I  did  in  my  former 
lecture.  But  those  who  heard  me  before,  and  have 


8  SUCCESS    IN    BUSINESS. 

done  me  the  honor  to  come  again,  will  bear  witness 
that  the  same  general  idea  pervades  what  I  say  to  you 
to-night  that  governed  or  controlled  my  former  address. 

WHAT     IS     BUSINESS? 

I  regretted,  on  a  recent  occasion,  when  I  addressed 
an  audience  smaller,  but  similar  in  kind  to  this,  that  the 
friend  who  introduced  me — not  in  this  city — thought  it 
necessary  to  go  into  a  warm  and  full  eulogium  on  Com- 
merce— not  undeserved,  not  out  of  place,  except  as 
it  might  imply  that  Commerce  was  Business,  and  that 
Traffic  alone  was  included  in  the  designation.  My  idea 
is  much  more  comprehensive,  very  decidedly  different 
from  this.  Doubtless,  all  Traffic  is  Business  ;  but  there 
is  very  much  Business  that  is  not  Traffic.  There  is  very 
much  to  be  studied  and  learned  by  those  who  aspire  to 
be  business  men  ;  and  there  are  very  large  fields  of  use- 
fulness— probably  of  profit — for  young  men,  which  are 
truly  Business,  but  are  not  Commerce.  Therefore,  I 
would  say  to  young  men — I  would  say  earnestly — Do 
not  judge  of  what  may  be  taught  you  in  Business  Col- 
leges, simply  by  its  adaptation  to  make  you  traffickers 
—traders,  merchants,  clerks,  book-keepers.  These  are 
well ;  these  are  important ;  but  they  are  not  all. 

THE     TRUE     BUSINESS     MAN. 

If  I  were  asked  to  define  a  business  man,  I  should 
say  he  was  one  who  knew  how  to  set  other  people's 
fingers  at  work — possibly  their  heads,  also — to  his  own 
profit  and  theirs. 


SUCCESS    IN    BUSINESS.  9 

This  may  be  in  trade,  it  may  be  in  manufactures,  it 
may  be  in  the  mechanical  arts,  or  in  agriculture;  but 
wherever  the  man,  who,  stepping  into  a  new  and  par- 
tially employed  community,  knows  how  to  set  new 
wheels  running,  axes  plying,  and  reapers  and  mowers  in 
motion,  and  so  of  all  the  various  machinery  of  produc- 
tion, transformation  and  distribution,  or  any  part  of  it 
— he  who  knows  how  to  do  this  with  advantage  to  the 
community  (as  he  can  scarcely  fail  to  do  it),  and  with 
reasonable  profit  also  to  himself,  that  man  is  a  business 
man,  though  he  may  not  know  how  to  read,  even;  though 
he  may  have  no  money  when  he  commences;  though  he 
has  simply  the  capacity — -which  some  possess  and  more 
men  aspire  to — to  make  himself  a  sort  of  driving-wheel 
to  all  that  machinery.  If  he  has  this,  he  is  a  true  busi- 
ness man,  although  he  may  never  have  received  any- 
thing more  than  the  rudest  common-school  education. 
I  have  such  men  in  my  eye  now;  and  they  were  not 
capitalists,  the  men  I  think  of.  They  ultimately  became 
so  by  means  of  business,  but  they  did  not  become  busi- 
ness men  by  means  of  their  capital.  I  will  cite  a  few 
instances  to  illustrate  my  meaning : 


DR.      SMITH. 


In  the  little  town  of  Westhaven,  Vt.,  whereof  I  be- 
came a  resident  in  my  tenth  year,  there  had  appeared, 
some  fifteen  or  twent}r  years  before  that,  an  active,  ener- 
getic, resolute  business  man,  named  Dr.  Smith.  He  had 
failed  in  Connecticut,  in  the  revulsions  caused  by  em- 
bargoes, and  non-intercourse,  and  so  on — when  many 


10  SUCCESS    IN    BUSINESS. 

men,  who  were  not  incapable,  failed;  and,  leaving  that 
State,  came  up  into  this  little,  new,  rude  community, 
then  the  western  half  of  the  township  of  Fairhaven. 
He  was  a  man  of  immense  energy — of  business  capa- 
city and  courage.  Finding  himself,  or  rather  locating 
himself,  in  the  midst  of  that  rude,  young  community, 
almost  wilderness  as  it  then  was,  he  commenced  at  once 
large  operations.  He  became  a  purchaser  of  timber- 
lands,  and  a  cutter  of  timber,  a  manufacturer  of  boards 
and  plank,  and  so  on;  and  thus  he  went  on  through  the 
twelve  or  fifteen  years  that  followed,  continually  in- 
creasing in  wealth,  and  increasing  the  activity  and 
prosperity  of  the  community  around  him,  until  he  had 
become  wealthy,  and  had  built  a  very  large  mansion, 
and  so  had  the  whole  township,  almost,  in  a  state  of 
industrial  activity,  depending  substantially  on  that  one 
guiding,  controlling,  impelling  brain.  He  died — as  men 
must  die — and  from  that  day  the  township  has  steadily 
receded  in  population.  There  has  been  no  such  house 
built  since  as  was  his;  and  that  has  become,  to  a  great 
extent,  a  ruin.  There  is  no  such  amount  of  industry 
and  activity — there  has  never  been  since — as  he  intro- 
duced there.  And  to-day  that  township  has  some  hun- 
dreds fewer  people  than  it  had  the  day  that  he  died, 
and  his  activity  died  with  him. 

Now,  there  are  everywhere  places  where  such  men 
are  needed, — streams  running  idly  over  rapids  to  the 
sea,  and  timber  waiting  for  the  right  men  to  cut  and 
manufacture  it.  And  all  over  the  world  to-day,  the 
capacities,  the  possibilities  of  wealth,  are  running  to 


SUCCESS     IN    BUSINESS.  11 

waste,  for  the  want  not  so  much  of  capital,  though  this 
is  desirable,  as  of  the  informing  and  directing  mind, 
to  set  business  in  motion.  In  other  words,  there  is  a 
general  need  of  business  men. 

"BILLY    GRAY." 

In  the  New  England  region  wherein  I  was  born,  the 
great  man,  fifty  years  ago,  was  William  Gray,  of 
Boston,  an  East  India  and  general  merchant,  who 
had  come  up  from  a  humble  beginning  to  be  the 
richest  man  in  New  England, — probably,  at  that 
time,  in  the  Union.  He  was  worth  a  million  of 
dollars  ;  and  in  my  boyhood  that  was  equal  to  thirty 
or  forty  millions  now — equal  in  the  popular  esti- 
mate, and  equal  in  effect.  Mr.  Gray  had  been  known 
to  all  Boston  as  having  grown  up  among  them  from  hu- 
mility, from  obscurity,  from  poverty,  to  wealth  and  con- 
sideration. He  was  the  same  man  still  that  he  had 
been  at  first — neither  ashamed  of  his  origin  nor  proud 
of  it;  simply  a  Boston  merchant,  a  business  man,  unas- 
suming and  unpretending,  going  about  his  own  affairs 
and  taking  care  of  them,  and  neither  greater  nor  less 
than  the  man  whom  he  met  every  day;  so  that  it  was 
told  of  him  that  one  day  when  another  merchant,  who 
had  started  higher  up  the  ladder  than  he,  said  to  him, 
in  a  fit  of  spleen — of  passion,  "  Billy  Gray,  I  knew  you 
when  you  were  only  a  drummer-boy  !"  "  Certainly 
you  did,"  he  responded;  "didn't  I  drum  well?" 
That  was  the  test  of  a  true  man.  to  him.  What  he 
found  in  life  to  do,  he  did  wett.  One  day,  a  smart  young 


12  SUCCESS    IN     BUSINESS. 

lawyer,  going  to  the  market  to  buy  some  meat  for  his 
dinner,  and  spying  a  very  common,  rusty  looking  man 
of  fifty  years  of  age  standing  there,  said  to  him : 
"  Would  n't  you  like  to  carry  home  my  meat  for  me  !" 
"  Yes,  sir,"  said  he,  "I  shall  be  very  glad  to."  So  he 
took  it,  and  followed  the  lawyer  home,  and  delivered 
the  meat  to  him,  and  received,  with  thanks,  a  shilling, 
that  the  lawyer  tendered  him,  saying,  "  If  you  ever 
again  have  any  little  jobs  to  do,  I  wish  you  would  give 
me  your  custom.  My  name  is  Billy  Gray;  everybody 
about  the  market  knows  me."  The  lawyer  concluded 
that,  if  Billy  Gray  could  afford  to  carry  home  his  meat 
for  a  shilling,  he  could  afford  to  carry  it  home  himself 
.after  that ;  and  he  did  so. 


STEPHEN    G-IRARD. 


I  think  one  of  the  most  remarkable  men  this  country 
has  ever  developed — I  cannot  say  produced — was  the 
late  Stephen  Girard,  of  Philadelphia — a  poor  German 
boy,  from  somewhere,  I  believe,  on  the  Rhine.  He  came 
to  Philadelphia  orphaned  and  in  poverty;  and,  sticking 
his  stake  there,  grew  up  resolutely,  quietly,  steadily, 
into  the  wealthiest  man,  and  probably  the  most  influ- 
ential, the  most  powerful  man,  that  Philadelphia  has 
ever  yet  developed.  He  lived  rudely,  not  to  say 
plainly.  He  had  few  associates — hardly  a  friend  ;  not 
happy,  I  think,  in  his  family;  at  all  events,  not  taking 
any  active  part  in  his  social  surroundings;  but  in  his 
stern,  rather  reticent  way,  working  out  his  own  problem 
in  due  time.  He  was  a  banker — his  the  Bank  of  Stephen 


SUCCESS     IN     BUSINESS.  13 

Girard;  and  the  old-fashioned  bankers,  who  did  things 
in  the  old-fashioned  way — some  of  them — did  not  un- 
derstand him  quite  well.  One  of  them,  at  any  rate,  un- 
dertook to  throw  out  his  notes.  This  banker  did  not  know 
Mr.  Girard's  Bank — there  was  no  such  bank  chartered 
according  to  law;  and  they  simply  rejected  his  notes 
at  their  counter.  He  said  nothing.  They  would  not 
take  his  notes;,  they  did  not  regard  them  as  bank  paper, 
but  simply  as  his  individual  notes.  But,  after  a  while, 
when  the  right  time  came,  he  went  to  that  bank,  laid 
down  a  few  thousand  dollars  of  its  notes  on  the  counter, 
and  asked  for  the  specie.  The  cashier  counted  out  the 
specie.  Then  he  laid  down  a  few  thousand  more;  and 
the  specie  for  these  was  counted  out.  He  kept  on  lay- 
ing down  notes,  and  they  kept  on  counting  out  the 
specie,  until  finally  they  asked, — "  Have  you  any 
more  ?"  He  said,  "  Yes,  I  have  a  few  more;"  and  they 
then  told  him  that  they  would  give  it  up.  They  prob- 
ably began  to  think  that  he  could  take  all  the  specie 
they  had — and  a  little  more ;  so  they  expressed  them- 
selves satisfied,  and  he  was ;  and  after  that  it  was 
always  fair  weather  between  them.  I  hardly 
think  we  have  to-day,  in  all  respects,  quite  the 
equal  of  this  stirring,  strong  man — believing  only  in 
Yoltaire,  who  believed  in  nothing — and  yet  while  every- 
body said  "  That  old  miser,  Girard,"  and  all  spoke  of 
him  with  opprobrium,  as  a  man  who  had  no  thought  but 
simply  to  get  money,  when  that  man  came  to  die — he 
had  not  answered  any  of  these  remarks  ;  in  fact,  any 
man  who  becomes  rich  may  better  acquire  the  name  of 


14  SUCCESS     IN    BUSINESS. 

a  miser ;  for  it  is  like  the  shell  of  the  turtle,  the  only 
protection  he  can  have  against  the  incessant  beggary 
and  importunity  of  those  who  have  nothing,  and 
do  not  mean  to  earn  anything.  When,  I  say,  Mr. 
G-irard  came  to  die,  his  will  was  a  noble  rebuke  to 
all  these  sneers  and  flings.  He  had  lived,  after  all, 
to  a  great  end ;  and  the  wise  and  liberal  disposition 
he  made  of  the  largest  share  of  his  property,  so  that 
thereby  other  orphan  boys  should  be  able  to  acquire 
the  instruction,  the  thorough  education,  which  he,  all 
his  life  long,  had  felt  the  need  of,  has  well  rebuked  the 
calumnies,  the  harsh  and  unfounded  judgments,  which 
had  for  so  long  been  silently  borne  by  him.  I  doubt 
whether  Philadelphia  has  had  any  other  man,  of  any 
name  or  condition,  who  has  done  her  so  much  practical, 
enduring  good  as  this  much-abused  Stephen  G-irard. 

New  York,  as  we  all  know,  has  developed  three  emi- 
nently rich  men.  Two  of  them  still  live :  therefore, 
I  shall  speak  of  them  with  reserve. 

JOHN    JACOB    ASTOR. 

The  late  John  Jacob  Astor  came  here  also  an  orphan, 
I  believe — at  all  events,  a  boy — with  nothing  but  a  per- 
sistent determination  to  make  his  way.  He  began,  early 
in  life,  as  a  fur  merchant,  and  became — commencing 
with  nothing — the  greatest  fur  merchant  that  the  world 
had  ever  known.  He  exhausted  the  possibilities  of  the 
fur  trade,  and  then  turned  from  that  the  means  that 
he  had  acquired  in  it  into  the  purchase  of  out-lots  of 
land  on  this  island,  which  had  not  yet,  but  would  soon, 


SUCCESS    IN    BUSINESS.  15 

become  valuable,  and  thereby  rolled  up  the  largest 
fortune  which  had  been  known  in  his  time,  and  died 
the  richest  man  that  America  had  ever  produced. 

CORNELIUS    VANDERBILT. 

Our  next  eminent  man  was  Cornelius  Vanderbilt, 
who  was  probably  the  most  consummate  master  of  the 
business  of  building  and  running  steamboats  that  the 
world  had  ever  yet  seen.  I  say  he  was,  because  he 
has  gone  out  of  that  business.  But,  be  that  as  it  may, 
he  commenced  life  first  as  the  owner  of  a  mere  sail- 
boat, plying  between  New  York  and  Staten  Island, 
where  he  was  born.  His  fortune  developed  itself  with 
the  origin  and  growth  of  steam  navigation.  He  well 
acquired  the  title  of  Commodore,  generally  given  to  him 
(and  might  be  called  Admiral  as  well),  by  mastering 
the  possibilities  of  steam  as  a  power  for  moving  vessels 
on  the  water.  He  kept  abreast  with  the  time — seeing 
what  might  be  done,  and  doing  it — until  he,  too,  had 
amassed  a  very  large  fortune;  and,  when  he  left  the 
business,  was  the  largest  owner  of  steamboat  and 
steamship  property  on  the  face  of  the  globe. 

A.    T.    STEWART. 

Mr.  A.  T.  Stewart,  our  third  wealthy  man,  has  de- 
veloped a  very  large  fortune  out  of  the  dry-goods  busi- 
ness ;  has  done  probably  all  that  one  man  can  do  with 
that  business,  to  make  it  a  source  of  profit,  of  wealth, 
of  power.  Of  these  three  rich  men,  only  one  is  a  native 
American.  Another  came  to  us  from  Germany;  a  third 


16  SUCCESS    IN    BUSINESS. 

from  thrifty  Scotland.  What  I  wish  our  young  men  to 
understand,  what  it  is  important  to  say  in  this  regard, 
is,  that  each  of  these  men  founded  his  fortune  on  what 
we  may  say  was  a  new  idea — certainly,  a  distinct  idea. 
Men  had  been  trading  in  every  way  from  time  imme- 
morial ;  men  had  been  employed  in  transferring  prop- 
erty and  persons,  beyond  any  account  we  have ;  men 
had  been  dealing  in  dry-goods ;  but  each  of  these  was 
a  man  who,  taking  a  distinct  line  of  business,  gave  to 
that  business  a  larger  development  than  any  one  man, 
within  my  knowledge,  had  ever  given  it  before. 
Neither  of  these  was  an  imitator;  neither  of  them  took 
an  idea  from  some  one  else,  and  followed  it  up ;  but 
each  commenced  in  his  own  proper  path — we  may 
say,  hewed  out  and  enlarged  his  own  proper  path  in 
life — and  followed  it  to  fortune.  Now,  then,  be 
sure  that  this  is  the  truth  :  that  these  men  of  ideas 
—if  you  please,  each  of  them  a  man  with  a  single  idea — 
that  each  of  these  will  be  followed  in  the  time  to  come 
by  other  great  men,  who  will  develop  other  ideas,  but 
not  theirs.  There  will  be  no  new  great  fortune  made 
by  following  servilely  in  the  track  of  either  of  these 
men,  but  by  bringing  some  new  combination  to  bear 
upon  human  wants;  in  other  words,  by  learning  how  to 
satisfy  some  decided  want  in  a  more  convenient  and 
economical  manner  than  it  has  been  hitherto  subserved. 

INVENTORS    AND    INVENTIONS. 

•  • 

The  world  is  always  reaching  out  after  new  economies 
—the  civilized  world.     It  is  always  devising — or  rather 


SUCCESS    IN    BUSINESS.  17 

original  men  devise,  and  the  world  readily  adopts — 
some  new  "short-cut,"  to  achieve  for  the  masses  of 
mankind  something  that  they  need,  at  a  smaller  ex- 
pense than  that  it  has  hitherto  involved.  And  so,  I 
presume,  the  wealth-gatherers  of  our  time,  the  men 
who  are  to-day  making,  or  have  recently  made,  fortunes 
—are  mainly  inventors,  or  the  owners  of  inventions. 
We  may  instance  Howe  and  the  Sewing-Machine  as  one 
development,  whereby  not  one  fortune  merely,  but  many 
fortunes,  have  been  made,  while  signally  benefiting  man- 
kind. And  so  of  Bigelow,  and  his  new  mode  of  carpet- 
weaving,  and  the  labor-saving  machines  in  that  field;  so 
McCormick,  and  other  inventors  of  reaping  and  mowing 
machinery,  are  persons  who,  in  our  day,  are  clearly 
and  palpably  on  the  road  to  wealth — each  of  them 
either  the  projector  or  the  welcomer  of  some  grand 
new  idea.  They  are  men  who  have  taught  the  world 
how  to  effect  more  of  some  desirable  thing  at  a  less 
cost  of  money  or  of  effort  than  was  previously  required; 
and  of  such  men  the  world  is  always  in  need.  It  is 
always  prepared,  when  it  understands  them,  to  welcome 
and  reward  them. 

THE   BENEFICENCE   OF   LABOR-SAVING-   INVENTIONS. 

There  is,  if  not  an  ever-increasing  need,  an  ever-in- 
creasing consciousness  of  need,  of  labor-saving  inventions 
and  machinery.  And,  if  those  inventions  should  render 
labor  twenty  times  as  productive  as  it  is  to-day — should 
make  this  a  general  rule,  that  all  human  labor  shall 
produce  twenty  times  as  much  as  it  does  to-day — there 

2 


18  SUCCESS    IN    BUSINESS. 

would  be  no  glut  of  products,  as  so  many  mistakenly 
apprehend.     There  would  only  be  a  very  much  fuller 
and  broader  satisfaction  of  human  needs.    Our  wants  are 
infinite.       They   expand   and   dilate   on   every   side, 
according  to  our  means — often  very  much  in  advance  of 
our  means — of  satisfying  them.    If  labor  shall  become — 
as  I  doubt  not  it  will  become  at  an  early  day — far  more 
productive,  far  more  effective,  than  it  is  now,  we  shall 
hear  nothing  like  a  complaint  that  there  are  no  more 
wants  to  be  satisfied,  but  the  contrary.     And  yet,  we 
know   the   fact  is   deplorably  true,  that   the   time  is 
scarcely  yet  remote  when  the  laboring  class,  distinc- 
tively so  called,  set  its  face  resolutely  against  new  inven- 
tions— set  to  work  deliberately  to  destroy  labor-saving 
machinery,  and  so  to  act  as  to  more  and  more  throw 
labor  back  into  the   barbaric  period  when  probably 
every  yard  of  cloth  cost  a  day's  labor,  as  did  every 
bushel  of  grain.     England  herself,  it  is  computed,  now 
does  the  work,  by  means  of  steam  and  machinery,  of  eight 
hundred  millions  of  men.    And  yet  English  wants  are  no 
more  satisfied  to-day  than  they  were  a  thousand  years 
ago.     I  do  not  say  they  are  altogether  unsatisfied;  but 
I  say  that  the  consciousness  of  want — the  demand  for 
products — is  just  as  keen  to-day;  and  I  have  not  a  doubt 
that,  if  inventions   could   be   introduced   into   China, 
whereby  the  labor  of  her  people  should  be  rendered 
fifty  times  as  effective  as  it  is  to-day,  you  would  find, 
not  a   dearth   of  employment  as  a  consequence,  but 
rather  an  increase  of  activity  and  an  increased  demand 
for  labor.      To-day,  British  capital  and  British  talent 


SUCCESS    IN    BUSINESS.  19 

are  fairly  grid-ironing  the  ancient  plains  and  slopes  of 
Hindostan  with  British  canals,  irrigating  canals,  and 
railroads.  It  is  their  gold,  they  say  ;  but  it  is  not 
British  capital,  so  much  as  British  genius  and  British 
confidence,  that  are  required.  There  is  wealth  enough 
in  India — more  gold,  and  silver,  and  gems,  probably 
to-day  than  in  Europe — for  the  precious  metals  always 
flow  thither,  and  they  very  seldom  flow  thence. 

ENERGY    AND    CONFIDENCE. 

But  what  is  wanted  is  that  cast  of  mind,  that  reaching 
forward,  which  says — "Though  we  spend  a  hundred 
millions  to  build  a  railroad  here,  we  are  very  certain 
that  the  return  will  be  ample  and  speedy."  If  the 
Asiatics  could  comprehend  and  believe  this,  there 
would  be  no  lack  of  capital  there.  And  I  have  no 
doubt  that,  when  India  shall  be  covered  with  railroads 
and  canals,  it  will  be  found  that  she  can  liberally  sub^ 
sist  a  very  much  larger  population,  and  employ  a 
larger  number  of  laborers,  than  she  has  ever  yet  done. 
In  other  words,  genius  will  give  scope,  and  space,  and 
opportunity,  for  many  more  millions  of  men;  because 
that  genius  will  incite  works  of  creation  and  construe^ 
tion. 


FRENCH    ECONOMY. 


I  was  standing  in  the  French  Exhibition  in  Paris 
twelve  years  ago,  when  my  eye  was  arrested  by  a  French 
scythe,  which  seemed  to  me  about  a  foot  shorter — per- 
haps not  quite  so  much — than  the  American  scythe. 


20  SUCCESS    IN    BUSINESS. 

Said.  I  to  a  French  friend,  "We  use  a  much  longer 
scythe  in  my  country,  and  are  thereby  enabled  to  cut 
more  grass  in  a  day  than  you  can."  "  Yes,"  said  he, 
"  I  know  it;  but,  do  you  see,  we  have  not  enough  labor 
for  all  our  people,  and  therefore  we  can  not  afford  to 
use  such  effective  machinery  as  you  do."  "Ah,"  said 
I,  "  you  have  not  labor  enough  now  ?"  "  No,"  said  my 
friend,  "not  enough."  "Then,"  said  Ir  "why  not  cut 
down  your  scythe  from  three  feet  to  two,  so  as  to  have 
enough  ?  If  that  is  the  object,  you  certainly  do  not 
effect  it."  My  friend  was  a  little  perplexed,  and 
changed  the  subject. 

UNEMPLOYED    RESOURCES    OF    AMERICA, 

I  have  travelled  across  the  great  American  Desert 
which  divides  the  Pacific  from  the  Atlantic  slope  of  this 
Continent.  I  have  seen  there  vast  stretches  of  really 
waste  land — I  should  judge,  mainly  the  result  of  con- 
tinual drought,  of  a  deficiency  of  water  or  of  moisture, 
which  is  probably  due  to  the  great  elevation  of  a  region 
which  rises  from  four  to  ten  thousand  feet,  not  counting 
the  mountain  peaks,  above  the  level  of  the  ocean.  But 
very  much  is  due  to  the  extreme  aridity  of  the  climate. 
And  yet,  on  that  vast,  sterile  plain,  I,  who  noted 
hurriedly  its  capacities,  saw  places — not  one,  but  sev- 
eral— where  a  skilful  engineer  could  build  a  dam,  for 
purposes  of  manufacturing  and  irrigation  combined,  at 
a  cost  of  $10,000,  which  would  create  $100,000  worth 
of  property — would  make  a  very  considerable  district 
fruitful  and  fertile,  and  as  productive  as  the  Mormons 


SUCCESS     IN     BUSINESS.  21 

have  made  the  region  which  they  first  settled,  around 
the  north  shore  of  Salt  Lake.  I  have  seen  places  where 
simple  genius  was  wanted,  and  capital  backing  genius, 
to  create  cities — hives  of  population — far  away  from 
any  place  where  civilized  man  has  lived,  yet  where 
barely  one  inventive  and  adaptive  brain,  one  wise  and 
skilful  man,  was  needed  to  create  new  centers  of  popu- 
lation and  industrial  activity,  and  thus  to  call  into  ex- 
istence thrifty  and  progressive  communities. 

TRUE   SPHERE   OF   BUSINESS   COLLEGES. 

And  so  the  world  waits — not  in  one  sphere,  not  in 
one  place  alone,  but  in  the  old  countries  and  the  new, 
inviting  crowded  hives  of  population  to  people  solitary 
regions — waits  for  business  men — men  of  capacity1 — men 
of  power — men  of  creative  thought — who  shall  know 
how  to  redeem  its  waste  places,  and  to  render  idle  popu-z- 
lations  industrious  and  thrifty.  And  here  it  is,  in  my 
judgment,  that  Business  Colleges  will  find  their  greatest 
sphere  of  utility :  that  is,  not  in  special  training  for 
special  pursuits,  as  too  many  believe  to-day,  but  in 
developing  a  larger  capacity  to  apprehend  and  to  seize 
the  opportunities  that  so  abundantly  exist  on  every  side, 
for  giving  new  activity  and  new  power  to  the  creation 
of  material  wealth. 


AN    ITALIAN    IN    IRELAND. 


Some  sixty  years  ago,  I  think,  a  young  Italian,  by  the 
name  of  Bianconi,  was  driven  by  some  accident,  I  know 
not  what,  to  the  shores  of  Ireland.  Ireland  is  a  forbid- 


22  SUCCESS     IN    BUSINESS. 

ding  country  to-day  for  the  immigrant ;  but  she  was  very 
far  more  uninviting  then — savage,  full  of  destitution  and 
discontent  of  every  kind,  and  probably  the  most  unat- 
tractive spot  for  a  new  man,  who  had  a  new  idea  in  his 
head,  on  the  face  of  the  earth.  But  this  man  Bianconi, 
this  Italian,  saw  that  one  of  the  great  needs  of  Ireland 
was  better  facilities  for  travel,  for  intercourse  between 
the  remoter  counties  and  the  metropolis;  and  he  com- 
menced, in  a  humble  way,  establishing  lines  of  stage 
and  mail  coaches;  and,  so  fast  as  one  became  profitable, 
using  the  profit  to  establish  another.  So  he  went  on, 
until  finally  his  stage-coaches  ran  almost  all  over  Ire- 
land, causing  roads  to  be  built  where  none  existed,  and 
roads  to  be  improved  where  roads  had  been  bad;  and  so 
proceeding,  until,  when  I  saw  him  in  Dublin,  in  the  j'ear 
1851,  he  was  a  hale,  old  man,  with  ample  fortune,  and 
now,  at  last,  with  ample  leisure;  but  a  man  who  had 
built  up  that  great  fortune  out  of  a  very  humble  begin- 
ning, by  observing  not  only  that  a  want  existed  which 
had  existed  for  five  or  six  centuries  in  that  island,  but 
that  the  people  would  pay  for  satisfying  that  want,  if 
the  right  man  would  provide  in  the  right  way  for  its 
satisfaction.  He  became  rich  and  honored,  in  an  enter- 
prise which  any  man  with  a  like  brain,  with  like  capacity, 
might  probably  have  anticipated  two  centuries  before. 
And  so,  if  men  who  know  how  to  strike  out  new  paths, 
not  to  follow  in  other  men's  tracks,  but  to  see  where 
something  is  needed  to  be  done  that  has  not  yet  been 
done — often,  perhaps,  where  men  of  deficient  capa- 
city have  failed — if  there  were  a  million  such  young  men 


SUCCESS     IN    BUSINESS.  23 

coming  on  the  scene,  there  is  room  and  work  for  them 
all,  and  reward  for  them  all. 

PROFESSOR    MAPES. 

It  is  something  like  fifteen  or  twenty  years  since  our 
old  friend,  now  departed  (Professor  Mapes),  failed  in 
this  city,  and  perhaps  in  Philadelphia  also.  He  had 
done  a  large  business,  and  made  a  great  failure,  and 
went  out  of  our  city  as  bankrupt  a  man,  probably,  as 
had  ever  left  here.  He  was  a  great  chemist.  He  was 
only  that.  And,  on  the  strength  of  his  chemical  knowl- 
edge, he  took  a  little  piece  of  land,  and  commenced 
farming — a  man  fifty  years  of  age,  beginning  to  farm, 
when  he  probably  had  never  before  in  his  life  paid 
attention  to  agriculture.  But  he  was  a  man  of  genius. 
I  do  not  care  what  his  faults  were — and  he  had  faults- 
he  was  really  a  man  of  observation  and  ideas.  And 
he  went  to  work  there,  and  made  for  himself  a  good, 
though  not  a  large  farm,  and  from  that  farm  realized  a 
profit  of  five  thousand  dollars  per  annum  for  a  number 
of  years — I  believe  for  nearly  all  the  years  after  he 
obtained  full  control  of  it.  Other  men  all  around  him, 
on  the  same  kind  of  land,  had  been  working,  without 
success,  for  two  hundred  years.  He  made  it  productive 
and  profitable  beyond  what  any  predecessor  had  ever 
done,  or  what  any  neighbor  had  done,  to  my  knowl- 
ledge  ;  and  I  speak  from  knowledge. 

LIEBIG-. 

So  our  great  genius,  Professor  Liebig — I  do  not 
care  if  he  has  made  mistakes — I  know  he  has  made 


24  SUCCESS     IN     BUSINESS. 

mistakes,  and  people  talk  of  them.  But,  after  all, 
I  believe  that  Professor  Liebig  has  stimulated  the 
agricultural  mind  of  Christendom  beyond  any  other 
man.  I  believe  that  the  world  is  richer  by  millions  to- 
day for  Professor  Liebig's  writings;  and,  whatever  his 
mistakes  have  been,  he  has  made  agriculture  a  more 
liberal  pursuit,  and  a  better  paid  pursuit  among  liberal 
men — better  rewarded,  than  it  ever  was  before. 


WANT    OF    CAPITAL. 


It  is,  in  my  judgment,  a  vulgar  error,  yet  a  very 
common  one,  to  suppose  that  a  man  needs  capital  to  go 
to  work  with.  I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  capital  is  not 
very  convenient  and  very  acceptable;  but  I  do  say  that 
there  is  a  prevalent  mistake.  If  you  were  to  ask  the  first 
hundred  young  men  who  should  pass  a  given  corner  in 
Broadway  to-morrow  morning,  whether  they  would  not 
like  to  borrow  $5,000  or  $10,000  and  go  into  business, 
I  apprehend  that  ninety  of  them  would  answer,  on  the 
instant,  "Yes,  I  would  like  it."  And  yet  I  predict 
that  nine-tenths  would  fail  if  their  wish  were  gratified. 
There  are  a  hundred  men  who  know  how  to  get  money, 
where  there  is  one  who  knows  how  to  take  good  care 
of  it.  Our  young  men  are  continually  reaching  out 
after  the  control  of  money,  before  learning,  or  seeking 
to  learn,  how  to  make  that  control  safe  to  themselves. 
It  is  the  capacity  to  use  money  safely  and  wisely  that 
men  need,  and  not  the  money.  It  is  not  so  difficult  to 
get  possession  of  other  men's  money  as  it  is  to  use  it  in 


SUCCESS     IN     BUSINESS.  25 

such  a  manner  as  to  be  profitable  to  the  lender  and 
the  user. 

OFFICE    SEEKING— -WORK    ENOUGH. 

I  have  been  somewhat  tried  in  other  times,  when 
I  was  supposed  to  have  some  influence  with  the  dis- 
pensers of  political  patronage,  by  that  endless  pro- 
cession of  young  men  coming  from  the  east  and  from 
the  west  to  ascertain  whether  there  was  not  some 
way  by  which  they  might  be  cork-screwed  into  some 
place  in  the  Custom  House,  some  employment  on  the 
police,  or  some  other  of  the  ten  thousand  shiftless  ways 
whereby  men  seek  to  protect  themselves  against  the 
obligation  to  use  their  minds  as  well  as  their  bodies  to 
get  a  living.  It  is  indolence — rather  indolence  than 
avarice;  indolence  of  mind,  more  than  of  body — that 
makes  the  world  so  greedy  in  our  day  for  place,  and 
for  political  office.  I  think  this  moment  of  a  young 
man — an  old  friend  and  playmate  in  boyhood — who 
came  to  me  in  1841,  and  said — "  I  must  have  a  place 
in  the  Custom  House."  "Why  'must7?"  "Well," 
said  he,  "  I  am  a  broken  merchant.  I  have  been  sell- 
ing dry-goods,  and  have  failed  utterly,  and  I  cannot  go 
into  business  again.  I  have  a  wife  and  five  children,  and 
I  must  live.  You  must  get  me  into  the  Custom  House." 
Well,  it  was  a  very  ungracious  task ;  but  I  went  down 
and  tried  very  hard  (for  my  friends  were  then  for  a 
few  days  in  power),  but  I  could  not  succeed.  I  told  him 
I  could  not.  He  thought  he  was  utterly  ruined.  But 
that  man  went  out  a  few  miles  and  bought,  on  credit,  for 


26  SUCCESS    IN    BUSINESS. 

$200,  a  news-stand,  where  periodicals  were  sold,  and 
commenced  work.  In  ten  years  from  that  time,  he  was 
worth  $10,000,  and  he  is  now  worth  $150,000.  If  he 
had  got  into  the  Custom  House — for  want  of  which  he 
thought  he  was  ruined — he  would  never  have  had 
$1,000  at  once  in  the  course  of  his  life.  A  young 
man  came  down  to  me  in  other  days,  when  it  was 
different  in  the  Custom  House,  and  said  to  me,  "  I  must 
have  a  place."  • '  Why  '  must'  ?  You  are  a  stout,  hearty 
young  man — why  '  must'  ?"  "I  have  nothing  to  do  with, 
and  cannot  do."  "  No,  sir,"  I  said,  "  that  is  no  reason. 
Have  you  a  decent  reputation  ?  Are  you  believed  in 
by  those  who  know  you  "  "  Well,  I  suppose  I  am." 
"  Then,  I  say  to  you,  you  do  n't  want  a  Custom  House 
place;  you  want  to  go  to  work."  Said  he,  "I  have 
nothing  to  work  with."  I  said,  "You  go  right  out  to 
the  first  farmer  you  know  living  near  a  railroad,  and 
buy  from  him  the  right  to  cut  timber  on  his  forest 
land,  payable  as  you  get  your  pay  from  the  railroad. 
He  certainly  can  afford  to  trust  you,  knowing  that  you 
will  pay  him  so  soon  as  you  get  your  money.  Then 
hire  some  men  to  cut  the  wood,  buy  a  team  to  haul  it 
to  the  railroad,  and  go  to  work.  In  that  way,  you  will 
in  five  years  find  yourself  worth  more  money  than  any 
man  in  the  Custom  House  who  has  been  there  twenty 
years."  My  friend  did  not  see  it,  and  went  away 
sorry.  But  I  venture  to  say  that  every  man  who  has 
failed  of  getting  a  place  in  the  Custom  House  is  better 
off  to-day  than  those  who  have  succeeded  in  getting 
places.  There  is  scope  to  do,  and  work  enough  every- 


SUCCESS     IN    BUSINESS.  27 

where  for  men  who  simply  have  the  reputation  for 
energy.  There  is  always  enough  to  do,  so  that  every 
man  may  set  himself  at  work  profitably.  I  do  not  say 
that  it  is  necessary  for  every  man  to  dig  ditches, 
although  I  do  believe  that  a  man  ought  to  dig  ditches 
rather  than  stand  idle.  I  hold  that  every  educated 
man  can  find  better  work,  that  will  pay  better,  and  be 
less  disagreeable,  than  that.  There  is  no  need  of  seek- 
ing these  Custom  House  places,  or  places  in  the  Post 
Office,  or  the  Internal  Revenue,  if  men  have  only  the 
pluck. 

PRACTICAL  EDUCATION  COLLEGES. 

The  objection  has  been  made  to  our  old-fashioned  col- 
leges, that  they  are  not  practical.  I  do  not  think  that  is 
an  accurate  statement  of  the  objection.  What  I  would 
say  is,  that  they  are  practical  with  reference  to  two  or 
three  pursuits,  but  that  the  demands  of  the  time  re- 
quire nine-tenths  of  our  young  men  in  other  pursuits 
than  those;  and  they  are  not  practical  with  reference 
to  these.  If  a  young  man  seeks  to  be  an  engineer 
in  the  control  of  steam,  or  a  builder  of  machinery, 
or  a  director  of  workmen,  or  wishes  to  qualify  for  one 
of  the  ten  thousand  pursuits  which  are  opening  on  every 
side,  I  could  not  say  to  him  that  a  college  course  would 
be  his  best — his  most  economical  preparation  for  that 
life.  This  has  often  saddened  me.  In  this  great  hive 
of  population,  there  are  indolent  men,  and  needy  men, 
and  idle  men,  in  every  sphere.  But  I  say  there  is  not 
one  stout,  temperate  spadesman — not  one  man  who 


28  SUCCESS    IN     BUSINESS. 

comes  here  able  to  dig  ditches,  or  to  mine  coal,  or  to 
do  any  kind  of  rude  labor — who  need  stand  idle  and 
starve,  if  he  will  only  go  on  his  feet  where  the  work  is 
to  be  found.  He  need  not  go  far.  But,  while  such  is 
the  fact  with  regard  to  mere  laboring  men,  whilst 
every  laboring  man,  who  is  not  a  drunkard,  who  comes 
to  this  country  with  no  evil  passion  to  gratify,  can 
surely  get  on — while  such  men  amount  to  three 
hundred  thousand  comers  a  year,  and  are  so  much 
addition  to  our  productive  wealth — I  know  there  are 
to-day  one  thousand  college  graduates — some  of  them 
having  graduated  with  honor  at  German  universities— 
who  are  walking  the  stony  streets  of  this  New  York, 
a,pd  know  not  how  to  earn  a  living.  That  is  a  condem- 
^/nation  of  our  university  system.  As  a  preparation  for 
professional  life — I  should  rather  say,  for  certain  pur- 
suits in  life — it  may  be  very  well :  but  when  I  see,  as  I 
do  see,  so  many  men  whose  education  has  cost  so  much, 
find  themselves  totally  unable,  with  all  that,  to  earn  a 
living;  not  immoral  men,  nor  drinking  men,  but  men, 
simply,  who  cannot  find  places  adapted  to  their  capa- 
cities: when  I  see  this,  I  am  moved  to  protest  against 
a  system  of  education  which  seems  to  me  so  narrow  and 
so  partial. 

USE    OF    BUSINESS    COLLEGES. 

I  believe  the  Business  Colleges  of  our  time  are  des- 
tined to  rectify  this  mistake.  If  these  Colleges  are 
not  exactly  what  they  should  be,  experience  and  sug- 
gestions from  every  side  will  tend  to  modify  them;  so 


SUCCESS     IN     BUSINESS.  29 

that  the  time  will  come  when  our  young  men,  going  to 
these  Colleges,  will  come  out,  if  they  do  not  now,  better 
prepared  for  the  battle  of  life  than  they  were  before. 

What  we  need  is  a  many-sided-ness.  What  gives 
our  Yankee-born  people  the  start  of  others  is,  that  they 
have  more  adaptation,  more  varying  capacities,  than 
almost  any  other  population.  When,  at  the  outset  of 
our  late  civil  war,  a  vessel,  the  U.  S.  frigate  Constitu- 
tion, was  aground  in  Annapolis  Harbor,  and  the  colonel 
of  a  Massachusetts  regiment  called  out,  "How  many 
men  are  able  to  work  that  vessel  off  ?  Those  who  can, 
will  step  four  paces  to  the  front" — at  once  forty  men 
stepped  out  to  take  hold  of  the  old  ship  and  work  her 
off.  Now,  that  is  what  we  want  ;  men  who  do  one 
thing,  it  may  be,  to-day,  but  who  are  prepared  to  do 
something  else  to-morrow,  if  something  else  is  needed 
and  that  which  they  are  doing  is  not.  What  we  need 
is  an  education  that  teaches  men  to  look  in  various  di- 
rections, qualifying  them  for  different  pursuits,  enabling 
them  to  do  what  they  desire  and  choose,  and  fitting 
them  to  do  something  else,  if  that  which  they  select 
shall  not  continue  to  be  profitable  or  desirable. 

I  should  say,  then,  that  our  education,  as  it  has  been— 
our  classical  education — is  not  sufficiently  comprehen- 
sive, at  any  rate  not  all-comprehending;  and,  when  our 
young  men,  having  finished  their  education,  as  they 
say,  come  down  to  the  city,  and  vainty  look  for  some- 
thing to  do — still  more,  when,  after  years  of  struggle  to 
establish  themselves  as  lawyers,  as  clergymen,  or  as 
physicians,  they  give  up  and  seek  something  else,  and 


30  SUCCESS    IN    BUSINESS. 

still  find  that  their  college  preparation  does  not  recom- 
mend them — I  feel  that  there  is  here  a  great  defect 
which  needs  to  be  corrected.  It  is  true,  and  happily 
true,  that  to-day  the  rush  into  the  professions  is  not 
so  eager  as  it  was.  The  time  was  when  every  college 
graduate  expected  to  find  his  pursuit,  his  sphere  of  ef- 
fort and  his  living,  in  one  of  the  professions;  but  now 
the  graduates  are  so  many  that  this  is  utterly  impossi- 
ble; while,  on  the  other  hand,  business,  in  all  its  various 
manifestations  or  developments,  multiplies  and  extends 
itself  on  everythand,  and  calls  for  new  brains  and  new 
minds  on  every  side.  This,  then,  the  Business  College 
aims  to  meet — this  larger  and  more  varied  demand.  It 
is  a  new  preparation,  a  new  adaptation  to  a  newly  felt 
necessity — a  necessity  for  the  great  mass  of  tolerably 
instructed  young  men  each  to  qualify  himself  for  a 
sphere  in  life,  perhaps  something  better,  something 
more  attractive,  than  that  of  the  mere  day-laborer. 
Nine-tenths  of  our  young  men  cannot  afford  either 
the  time  or  the  means  required  for  a  college  course. 
They  have  relatives  dependent  upon  them;  they  have 
demands  on  their  time;  they  have  limited  means  which 
forbid  the  acquirement  of  a  classical  education:  still, 
they  need  and  seek  instruction  beyond  that  afforded 
by  common  schools. 

REFORM    IN    TRADE. 

I  have  said  that  the  public  is  all  the  time  blindly, 
unconsciously  seeking  new  economies — seeking  to  have 
its  buying  and  selling  done  by  fewer  hands  or  at  a 


SUCCESS    IN    BUSINESS.  31 

smaller  expense.  Thus,  we  have  seen  in  our  day  that, 
though  the  number  of  traders  increases,  yet  the  increase 
bears  no  proportion  to  the  development  of  trade  itself. 
The  dry-goods  store,  which  was  a  box  a  little  more 
than  a  hundred  years  ago,  has  become  a  palace;  and 
the  merchant,  the  wholesale  merchant,  who  does  less 
than  a  million  of  dollars  a  year  of  trade,  is  counted  a 
small  affair,  where  a  hundred  thousand  would  have/ 
been  large  a  few  years  ago.  Now,  we  have  in  our  grain 
elevators  and  all  the  machinery  of  commerce,  new  and 
gigantic  appliances  adapted  to  the  new  demand,  or 
new  consciousness  of  demand.  Yet,  this  process  of  con- 
centration is  barely  begun.  I  heard  the  other  day 
that  a  young  man  had  a  new  thought  with  regard  to 
the  flour  trade.  He  has  determined  to  send  to  every 
mechanic's,  or  every  laboring  man's,  or  every  man's 
door  a  barrel  of  flour  at  wholesale  prices,  that  is  to  say: 
to  bring  himself  into  a  relation  with  the  producers  and 
the  consumers  of  flour,  which  shall  cut  off  a  platoon  of 
middle  men,  and,  while  giving  him  but  a  very  small 
profit  on  each  barrel  of  flour,  giving  him  a  large  profit 
on  the  annual  sale  of  100,000  barrels  of  flour.  And 
this  is  one  of  the  ideas  which,  in  some  hands,  will  yet 
be  rendered  fruitful. 

I  have  no  doubt  the  time  will  come  when  cooked  meals 
will  be  sold,  and  always  accessible,  in  this  city,  at  a 
smaller  cost  than  any  single  buyer  must  pay  for  the  raw 
materials,  bought  at  our  groceries  and  meat-shops,  out 
of  which  those  meals  are  produced.  And  so  with  this 
great  area  of  garden  cultivation  surrounding  us,  clamor- 


32  SUCCESS    IN     BUSINESS. 

ing  all  the  time  for  new  facilities  of  reaching  its  custom- 
ers :  The  gardener,  fifty  miles  from  New  York,  receives 
for  his  produce  less  than  half  that  the  New  York  con- 
sumer pays  for  it,  and  the  balance  goes  to  support  a*  host 
of  hucksters  and  middle  men  of  various  kinds,  who  are 
necessary  only  because  that  branch  of  trade  is  so  clumsy. 
Whenever  the  right  man  shall  appear,  all  this  will  be 
reduced  to  system  and  order.  The  purchaser  in  New 
York  will  buy  for  perhaps  five  per  cent,  profit  or  ten 
per  cent,  profit  on  the  cost  of  the  article  to  the  pro- 
ducer, adding  the  cost  of  wholesale  transportation.  From 
every  side,  such  economies  solicit  us.  They  demand 
the  men — they  demand  those  who  know  how  to  make 
these  improvements.  I  have  suggested  two  or  three 
ways  wherein,  doubtless,  a  dozen  gigantic  fortunes  can 
be  made;  but  the  makers  will  be  men  who  work  the 
machinery  themselves — who  know  what  to  do  and  how 
to  do  it — who,  with  their  own  brains,  surveying  the 
whole  field,  know  how  to  create  or  combine  the  ma- 
chinery whereby  that  field  may  be  profitably  occupied. 

ECONOMY    IN    TRIFLES. 

One  point  wherein  the  American  people  are  exceed- 
ingly deficient  is  that  of  method.  We  are  energetic ; 
we  are  audacious ;  we  are  confident  in  our  own  ca- 
pacities and  in  our  national  destiny;  but  we  are  not 
a  systematic,  a  frugal,  economical  people.  Whoever 
has  looked  through  a  London  street,  a  business  street, 
and  seen  how  carefully  every  piece  of  paper,  every 
wrapper,  every  newspaper,  is  gathered  up  and  saved, 


SUCCESS    IN    BUSINESS.  33 

perhaps  by  the  man  who  is  making  ten  thousand  or 
twenty  thousand  pounds  a  year,  while  here  we  hustle 
everything  into  the  street — care  for  nothing  but  to 
get  rid  of  it  as  easily  as  possible — must  be  aware  that 
the  difference  between  our  people  and  the  Europeans 
are  immense.  We  lose  in  trifles  what  would  be  for  the 
collector  a  competence.  I  was  one  day  gratified,  when 
travelling  down  the  Rhine,  to  see  a  G-erman  family, 
evidently  of  the  better  class — an  educated,  cultivated 
family,  taking  their  excursion  on  the  steamboat — draw 
together  on  one  corner  of  the  boat,  take  out  their  din- 
ner, which  they  had  brought  with  them,  and  sit  down 
to  enjoy  a  frugal  but  substantial  meal.  I  have  no 
doubt  they  fared  much  better  than  we  did  at  the  steam- 
boat table,  and  at  a  quarter  of  the  cost.  There  is  no 
American  family  of  position  that  would  venture  to  do 
that  on  a  great  public  steamboat.  We  are  an  ostenta- 
tious people.  We  think  too  much  of  what  others  may 
say  of  us,  and  too  little  of  what  is  essentially  right. 

PERSONAL    ACCOUNT-KEEPING. 

I  think  every  young  man  should  begin  forthwith 
to  keep  debit  and  credit  with  himself  and  with  the 
world.  If  every  man  would  resolve  to  know  just 
where  all  the  money  that  passes  through  his  hands 
goes  to,  and  would  keep  that  account  carefully — setting 
down  every  item  at  the  close  of  each  week — I  venture 
to  say  there  would  be  economies  in  his  next  year's  ac- 
count that  were  overlooked  in  the  past.  I  hope  these 

3 


34  SUCCESS    IN     BUSINESS. 

colleges  are  destined  to  teach  us  method  and  order 
in  our  business  and  in  our  industry.  There  are 
500,000  farmers,  probably,  in  the  State  of  New  York 
to-day,  who,  if  you  were  to  ask  each  of  then!  how 
much  per  bushel  his  corn  had  cost  him  to  grow  for 
the  last  twenty  years,  I  doubt  if  fifty  of  the  500,000 
could  tell  you.  And  this  is  but  one  instance  out  of  ten 
thousand.  Now,  every  grower  of  agricultural  pro- 
ducts should  inquire  and  ascertain,  year  after  year, 
"  What  does  this  cost  me?  What  does  it  bring  me? 
Am  I  growing  wheat  at  a  profit,  corn  at  a  profit,  and 
grass  at  a  profit  ?  Which  among  my  products  are 
profitable  to  me  ?  On  which  do  I  realize  a  loss  ?"  All 
business  should  be  done  with  that  constant  regard 
to  method;  but  how  seldom  do  we  find  this  or  anything 
like  it  ?  I  venture  to  say  that  the  young  man  who  has 
commenced  to  keep  an  account  of  his  time — to  charge 
himself  with  wasted  hours,  with  neglected  opportuni- 
ties, and  with  squandered  means — will  find  himself 
very  soon  resolving  on  wholesome  retrenchments  and 
reforms. 

I  lay  this  down  as  a  general  rule,  that  any  young 
man  who,  at  the  close  of  his  first  year  of  responsible, 
independent  life,  has  saved  something,  and  knows 
where  to  find  it,  will  go  on  to  competence;  whereas,  the 
young  man  who  at  the  close  of  his  first  year  has  made 
nothing,  and  has  saved  nothing — I  do  not  say  in  money, 
but  who  has  made  himself  no  better  off — will  almost 
certainly  die  a  poor  man.  and,  if  he  lives  in  this  city, 
he  will  probably  be  buried  at  the  public  cost. 


SUCCESS     IN     BUSINESS.  35 

WHAT    BUSINESS    COLLEGES    MAY    DO. 

What  I  hope,  then,  from  our  Business  Colleges  is,  that 
they  shall  educate  and  send  out  a  class  of  young  men 
qualified  to  direct  the  various  processes  of  industry, 
whether  it  be  to  mine  coal,  or  to  manufacture  fuel  from 
peat,  or  to  make  iron,  or  whatever  it  may  be,  even  to 
the  least  hopeful  of  all,  the  digging  of  gold  and  silver- 
that  whatsoever  of  these  are  to  be  done,  they  shall  be 
done  with  a  regular,  careful,  methodical  account  of 
profit  and  loss;  and  that,  thus  making  each  year  an  im- 
provement on  the  last,  we  shall  come  at  no  distant  day 
to  have  a  very  much  more  productive  and  effective 
national  industry  than  we  have  to-day — pursuing,  per- 
haps, a  larger  variety  of  employments,  but  pursuing  all 
these  to  profit — cutting  off  the  defective,  the  unprofit- 
able employments  and  extending  those  that  are  advan- 
tageous— until  the  national  industry  shall  be  employed 
very  much  more  profitably  than  it  is  to-day. 

THE    ACQUIREMENT    OF    WEALTH. 

If  I  have  been  understood  in  this  to  give  an  undue 
prominence  to  the  acquirement  of  wealth,  I  need  only 
say  that  I  have  never  considered  the  acquisition  of 
an  immense  fortune  desirable;  but  this  I  do  hold,  that 
thrift,  within  reasonable  limits,  is  the  moral  obligation 
of  every  man ;  that  he  should  endeavor  and  aspire  to 
be  a  little  better  off  at  the  close  of  each  year.  I  never 
could  sympathize  with  a  large  class  who  are  fond  of 
saying,  "  I  am  proud  of  being  a  poor  man."  Doubtless, 


36  SUCCESS     IN     BUSINESS. 

misfortune,  calamity,  sickness,  heavy  burdens,  may 
justify  men  in  being  poor  to  the  last  days  of  their 
lives ;  but,  after  all,  this  universe  is  not  bankrupt— 
we  are  not  sent  into  it  to  fight  a  losing  battle.  It  is 
possible,  nay,  it  is  feasible,  for  every  man  to  be  thrifty 
if  he  will  be  frugal,  not  only  in  his  expenditures, 
but  in  the  use  of  his  time.  If  his  time  and  means  are 
profitably  employed,  I  say  there  is  no  need  of  his  being 
poor  and  needy  to  the  end  of  life. 

ELEMENTS    OF    BUSINESS    SUCCESS. 

I  close,  then,  with  some  suggestions  as  to  what  I  con- 
sider the  bases  of  a  true  business  career — those  which 
give  reasonable  assurance  of  a  true  business  success. 
I  place  first  among  these,  integrity  ;  because  I  believe 
that  there  is  to-day  a  good  deal  of  misapprehension  on 
this  point.  There  is  now  and  then  a  case  of  brilliant 
rascality  known  among  us;  and  we  hear  of  this,  and 
talk  of  it ;  we  are  inclined,  some  of  us,  to  admire  it ; 
but,  after  all,  there  are  no  cases,  except  very  excep- 
tional cases,  wherein  roguery  has  led  to  fortune.  The 
rule  is  almost  absolute,  that  our  thrifty  men  have  been 
essentially  upright  men.  You  will  find  few  cases  where 
the  dishonest  man  has  continuously  flourished.  There 
have  been  cases  of  his  temporary,  transient,  meteoric 
success;  but  the  rule  is  very  uniform  in  its  operation, 
that  business  success  has  been  based  on  a  broad 
platform  of  integrity.  Next  to  that,  I  would  place 
frugality,  on  which  I  have  said  as  much  as  I  mean 
to  say.  And  next,  general  capacity — I  mean  natural 


SUCCESS     IN     BUSINESS.  37 

capacity.  I  venture  to  say  that  all  our  successful  men 
in  business  have  been  men  of  strong,  original  minds. 
It  is  perfectly  idle,  the  popular  conception  that  for- 
tune goes  by  luck,  or  that  weak  men  make  it.  Weak 
men  make  money.  They  do  so  in  very  rare  in- 
stances ;  and  there  are  abundant  cases  where  strong 
men,  having  other  desires,  other  aspirations,  have 
not  sought  wealth.  The  rule  is  very  general,  how- 
ever, that  the  men  who  have  succeeded  have  been 
men  of  very  strong  natural  powers.  Then  comes  train- 
ing— general  and  special  education  and  system — and 
after  that  the  energy  of  continuous  application.  There 
is  nothing  else  wherein  the  rolling  stone  is  so  bare  of 
moss  as  in  business.  The  true  business  man  must  have 
the  power  of  persistency  in  discouragement — of  keep- 
ing on  continuously  in  a  good  track,  sure  that  he  will 
come  to  the  right  result  at  last. 

BORROWING    AND    LENDING. 

If  I  could  make  my  protest  as  strongly  as  I  wished 
against  the  ruinous  habits  of  borrowing  and  lend- 
ing, which  are  entirely  too  common  among  young 
men,  I  would  like  to  be  felt  on  that  subject.  There 
are  in  the  same  boarding-house  half  a  dozen  young 
men ;  half  of  them  are  frugal,  careful  and  economical ; 
the  other  half,  reckless,  extravagant  and  ostentatious; 
and  the  thrifty  half  are  continually  beset  by  the  other 
half,  to  lend,  to  lend,  to  lend.  I  should  like  to  have  it 
laid  down  as  a  stern,  inflexible  rule  by  the  young  man 
who  means  to  succeed,  that  he  will  neither  borrow  nor 


38  SUCCESS     IN     BUSINESS. 

lend.  I  do  not  mean  to  say,  there  are  no  exceptions 
to  this ;  but  I  do  mean  to  say,  Let  each  man  take  care 
of  his  own  money;  if  he  don't,  it  will  not  be  taken  care 
of.  It  is  a  very  common  remark  that  one-half  of  the 
world  does  not  know  how  the  other  half  lives.  I  think 
it  does,  for  one-half  lives  on  the  other;  and  the  thrifty 
half  of  the  population  of  New  York  are  taxed  twenty 
millions  every  year  in  borrowings  and  endorsements 
by  the  unthrifty  half;  and  it  is  high  time  that  this  tax 
was  repealed. 

CONCLUSION. 

Young  men,  I  would  have  you  believe  that  success 
in  life  is  within  the  reach  of  every  one  who  will  truly 
and  nobly  seek  it — that  there  is  scope  for  all — that  the 
universe  is  not  bankrupt — that  there  is  abundance  of 
work  for  those  who  are  wise  enough  to  look  for  it 
where  it  is — and  that,  with  sound  morality  and  a  care- 
ful adaptation  of  means  to  ends,  there  is  in  this  land  of 
ours  larger  opportunities,  more  just  and  well  grounded 
hopes,  than  in  any  other  land  whereon  the  sun  ever 
shone.  There  te  work  for  all ;  and  this  great  country, 
whereof  we  are  citizens,  is  destined,  in  spite  of  her  tem- 
porary embarrassments,  to  bound  forward  on  a  career 
of  prosperous  activity  such  as  the  world  has  not  known. 
That  you  may  be  a  part  of  that  movement — that  you 
may  help  to  inspire  it — is  my  hope;  and  I  trust  that 
the  few  hints  I  have  given  you  to-night  may  be  of  some 
value  in  guiding  you  in  the  right  course. 


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